Posted on 01/22/2009 8:23:14 PM PST by smokingfrog
BREAKING NEWS CNN (January 22/2009) 3:55pm EST:
KBR, formally Halliburton, a private contractors, through shoddy work caused electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers in army bases in Iraq.
Funny how CNN has the ability to find a “scoop” when it wants to while at the same time being in the dark on others.
That's because they will report anything that might have a chance of relecting poorly on George W. Bush. It is their mantra.
>>>>>They were tasked with building fast, cheap housing in a war zone!<<<<<<<
Neither am I a cheerleader for KBR/Halliburton, but the good work they did far outstripped the bad at my base. In fact it was amazing to me that they’d constructed what essentially was a small town in the middle of nowhere. And they also ran the housing, commissaries, and infrastructure, all pretty darned weel in my estimation.
There were glitches, like when they ran the feed cable for our huge generator across and on top of a gravel parking lot, which caused the cable to be cut (losing all electricity) when the heavy fuel trucks came by to fill up the gen tanks (ironic that the generators would only fail when the refueling trucks were leaving the parking lot).
In the course of a few weeks the cable was replaced twice (and cut twice again when refueling took place), until Halliburton finally sent a labor crew to dig a trench and bury the cable 1 foot underground, which we’d suggested from the outset.
I'll wait for a credible source.
I wonder if URS has ever been investigated for shotty work.
Actually it was Lady Bird’s Brown and Root.
Further evidence that there’s no reason to watch CNN.
One idiot and their lawyer can sue anyone for anything in America. This may be real and maybe not.
I don't want to get on either the support or bash KBR side. But... in my neighborhood in Dallas, the telephone and cable companies send one person to install service, and they leave the cables lying on top of the alleys where vehicles have to cross them, and a few days later, a jetting crew arrives and buries them below the alley. Sometimes vehicles break the cables before they get buried.
Now on to this issue. It may be that taking the cable burial crew from a more critical priority to immediately bury this cable was more costly or disruptive to other operations than having the temporary outages associated with the cable and the need for replacing the cable a few times. I don't know that... just speculating.
I see nothing wrong with your assessment where I am sitting North of Baghdad.
True, and every THING else was Lady Bird’s. LOL!
Now the prosecutors will have to determine "Who" is criminally liable within the company and prosecute them. Good luck trying to identify an individual who was both ultimately responsible and criminally liable.
This is all just a liberal press wet dream. The actual legal proceedings have about a .001% chance of success in the end. In the meanwhile, the liberal press will milk it for all it's worth, there will be no charges (or dropped charges) two to five years down the road, and everybody in America will "remember" how the evil B&R was "guilty" of negligent homicide.
That's the wash, spin, and repeat cycle of modern journalism.
See post #17.
A company can in fact be charged, but it is rare. Arthur Anderson was indicted, which led directly to its downfall since many people will not do business with a company that is under indictment, whether or not it is convicted. That indictment was quashed by the Supreme Court (I forget the exact reason), but in more extreme cases a company can be indicted.
An isolated case of negligence is not that sort of case, however.
Who gets sued/charged when a parachute fails to open? Who gets charged when the famous M4 jams? Who gets charged when.______ (fill in the blank!)
I'm not defending KBR, But I'm very suspicious of the new US communist regime.
When I was deployed to Iraq from 2005-7 (yes, I got the jumbo deployment) expats generally supervised work down by third country nationals. Most of the third country nationals were from Pakistan and India. Towards the end of my deployment in 2007, local Iraqi firms starting to take over a considerable portion of the work, especially road maintenance and construction of concrete blast barriers. The only supervision of the local Iraqi firms that I observed came from soldiers escorting the workers.
It sounds like a grandstanding Dem lawyer to me.
If there was really gross negligence, rather than honest mistakes, I agree with you.
I think that guy ran over and killed someone while driving, possibly intoxicated. Not sure of the details.
The democrats (especially people like Waxman) are definitely trying to make this into a political issue. As usual, they seem to be more interested in scoring political points than solving the problem.
Things change. I left Bagram in ‘04.
Back then, all new construction was done by HCN’s. KBR Village was constructed by HCN’s. KBR was strictly O&M.
You’re right about grand-standing Dem lawyering...how else
to repay those who contributed big to the ‘cause’ than to boost a career here and there. The Dems hang-out in a pit of vipers all screwing and eating each other while being victims.
I feel for anyone who was stuck at that place. I loathe Bagram like a disease. I spent my time at Kandahar and a couple of FOBs. Considering going back. Not sure if I really want to or not.
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